User Guide

How to Use Quizpio

Quizpio turns your WordPress site into a live, multiplayer quiz game. You build a quiz with the block editor, players join from any device with a PIN and a nickname, and everyone plays together in real time on a shared leaderboard — the kind of fast-paced game you’ve seen at conferences and classrooms, running entirely on the site you already own. Any question can also be a poll, so opinion checks and icebreakers sit right alongside scored questions. No apps, no third-party service.

This guide walks through everything from installing the plugin to running your first live session and reading the results afterward.

Getting started

Install from your dashboard (recommended)

1. Go to Plugins → Add New and search for “Quizpio”.
2. Click Install Now, then Activate.

Or install manually

1. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the Quizpio .zip, click Install Now, then Activate; or
2. Via FTP, extract the quizpio folder into /wp-content/plugins/ and activate it from the Plugins page.

Quizpio needs WordPress 6.3 or later and PHP 7.4 or later. On a multisite network, activate it on each site that needs it — network-wide activation isn’t supported.

After activating, Quizpio opens a short welcome screen, and a Quizpio menu appears in your admin sidebar. It contains everything you need: a Dashboard, your Quizzes, Add New Quiz, Sessions history, a Players list, and Settings (Players and Settings are for administrators). There’s nothing you have to configure before creating your first quiz — the defaults are sensible out of the box.

You’ll also see a Quizpio Pro page in that menu, describing the optional paid add-on. It’s one page you can ignore — nothing else in the plugin mentions it, and it disappears from the menu entirely once Quizpio Pro is installed and active.

Building a quiz

Each quiz is a normal piece of WordPress content with its own page and URL, so you manage quizzes much like Posts or Pages.

1. Go to Quizpio → Add New Quiz.
2. Give the quiz a title at the top.
3. The editor opens with a Quizpio Quiz block already in place, containing one Quizpio Question block to get you started.
4. Fill in the first question, then add more questions with the + Add Question button inside the quiz block. (The quiz block only accepts question blocks, so you can’t accidentally drop the wrong thing inside it.)
5. Publish when you’re done.

To run the quiz, click View on the quiz (from the Quizzes list or the editor) to open its page — that page is where you’ll host the live session.

The editor checks your work before you publish. If a question is missing something — no question text, fewer than two filled-in options, two options that read the same, or the option marked correct left empty — the editor flags it and lists what’s missing inline. A quiz with no questions can’t be published either. Drafts always save, so you can leave a quiz half-finished and come back to it; only publishing (or updating a quiz that’s already published) waits until every question is complete.

Two block-editor concepts to keep straight:

• The Quizpio Quiz block is the container. Its settings (in the editor sidebar when the quiz block is selected) control how the whole quiz behaves — scoring, reveals, and pacing. See Quiz settings.
• Each Quizpio Question block is one question. Its settings control that single question — its type, time limit, and points.

Question types and polls

Select a Quizpio Question block to see its settings in the sidebar.

Question type offers two options:

• Multiple choice — up to four answer options (two is the minimum); mark one as correct.
• True / False — a statement with two options; mark the correct one. The True and False labels are ordinary text fields, so you can rename them and run true/false questions in any language.

Switching a question’s type resets its answers, so choose the type before writing the options.

For each question you also set:

• Time limit (5–120 seconds) — how long players have to answer; 20 seconds by default.
• Max points (100–2000) — how many points a correct answer is worth; 1000 by default.
• The answer options themselves, with one marked Correct.

Making a question a poll

Turn on Poll — no points in that question’s settings. A poll has no points and no correct answer: nobody’s score changes, the Max points slider disappears, the “Mark correct” buttons vanish from the options, and the editor stops asking you to nominate a right answer. Instead of a verdict, the reveal screen shows how the room voted, and in a quiz that mixes polls with scored questions, players see the question tagged as a Poll on their own screen, so they always know an answer isn’t being scored.

Polls take two to four choices, and you can mix them freely with scored questions — an opinion check between two trivia rounds, an icebreaker to open a training session, a temperature-read partway through a lesson.

Quiz settings

Select the Quizpio Quiz block (the container) to find these in the sidebar. They apply to the entire quiz. In a quiz where every question is a poll, Scoring style and Show full standings to players are hidden, since polls have no scores — your choices are kept and come back when any question is scored again.

• Scoring style. Speed bonus (the default) rewards faster correct answers: an answer in the first 30% of the time limit earns the question’s full points, and after that the score tapers down to half as time runs out. Flat gives every correct answer the full point value regardless of speed — the right choice for assessments, where being quick shouldn’t earn more than being right.
• Reveal answers between questions. When on, a reveal screen appears after each question for a few seconds before the next one. On a scored question it shows the correct answer, how many players chose each option, and the standings; on a poll — which has no correct answer and changes nobody’s score — it shows only how the room voted. Turn it off to move straight from one question to the next.
• Show full standings to players. When on, players see the complete leaderboard on the Final Results screen. When off, they see the top 10 plus their own rank — better for assessments or large groups where individual standings should stay private.
• Require host to click Next between questions. By default the quiz advances on its own. Turn this on to switch to manual pacing — the quiz waits for you to advance it, which is ideal for classroom discussion or a debrief between questions. In this mode the timer becomes advisory rather than enforced: the question stays open until you move on, and so does each reveal.

Embedding a quiz in a page or post

If you’d rather run the quiz from inside an existing page or post than at its own URL:

1. Edit the page or post where you want the quiz.
2. Add a Quizpio Quiz Embed block.
3. Pick the quiz you want from the dropdown.
4. Publish.

The quiz now plays at that location. Only one Quizpio Quiz Embed block is supported per page or post, but you can embed different quizzes on different pages. Sessions always belong to the quiz itself, so results from an embedded play roll up into that quiz’s history alongside every other session — wherever it was played. The quiz must be published to play in an embed, and adding the embed block is an administrator’s job; Quiz Authors host from the quiz’s own page.

Hosting a live session

Open the quiz’s page (its own URL, or the post where you embedded it). Because you can edit the quiz — you’re its author or an administrator — you’ll see Quizpio — Host Controls; everyone else sees the join form. To try the quiz as a player, open it in a private window or on another device.

1. Launch the session. Click Launch Session. Quizpio creates a session and shows you a PIN.
2. Share the PIN. Read it out, put it on the projector, or share the quiz page’s address. As players join, you’ll see them appear while the screen shows Waiting for players….
3. Start the quiz. When everyone’s in, click Start Quiz at the top. Once the quiz starts, nobody new can join this session, so give latecomers a moment first. A short “Get ready!” countdown appears on the host screen and every player’s screen at once, so the room arrives at the first question together rather than in dribs and drabs.
4. Run it. While a question is live you can Skip to Reveal (or Skip to Next when reveals are off; End & Show Results on the last question) to move ahead before the timer ends. Use ⏸ Pause and ▶ Resume to hold the room: the timer stops, nobody can answer, and players see a clear “⏸ Quiz paused by host” banner.
5. Watch the standings. A side panel shows the top 10 players. With reveals on, it updates at each reveal and holds still while a question is live; with reveals off, it shows live standings from the second question on. On wide screens it sits beside the question, with a ⊟ Hide LB / ⊞ Show LB button to tuck it away; on smaller screens it stacks below. If you hide it, scored reveals show the top 5 in its place. (In an all-poll session the panel is a simple player list, and its button reads ⊟ Hide Players / ⊞ Show Players.)
6. Move between questions. If you turned on Require host to click Next, the quiz waits for you between questions; otherwise it advances automatically. After a scored question, the reveal shows the correct answer, how many players chose each option, and the standings going into the next question; after a poll, it shows only how the room voted.
7. Finish. After the last question the quiz moves to the final results on its own — or, if you’re pacing it by hand, when you click End & Show Results. To stop early, click End Quiz; you’ll be asked to confirm first.

The host view survives a page refresh, so an accidental reload won’t drop your session.

The player experience

Players don’t need an app or an account (unless you require one — see Guests vs. logged-in players). On any device — phone, tablet, or laptop:

1. Visit the quiz page and look for Join the Live Quiz.
2. Enter the Quiz PIN and a nickname, then tap Join Quiz. Nicknames can be up to 30 characters and must be unique within the session. (Logged-in users have their nickname prefilled from their WordPress profile.)
3. Each player gets a color avatar generated from their nickname, so they have a consistent visual identity that recurs across sessions.

Once a question appears, players tap their answer — it can’t be changed — and are told straight away whether it was right (Correct! +850 or Incorrect; on a poll, Response recorded), followed by Answer locked in — waiting for the next screen. In a quiz that mixes polls with scored questions, poll questions are tagged as polls on the player’s own screen, so nobody wonders why their score didn’t move. The leaderboard always shows a player’s own row — even when they’re outside the top — marked with a YOU badge, so everyone can see where they stand.

Leaving. A Leave Quiz link (Leave poll in an all-poll quiz) appears on every question and reveal screen. After a confirmation (“Leave quiz? You won’t be able to rejoin this session.”), the player exits cleanly without disrupting anyone else. Any points they’ve already earned stay on the leaderboard, but they can’t rejoin that same session. Players still waiting in the lobby can simply tap Leave — their entry is removed.

Refreshing and reconnecting. A player who refreshes the page, loses connection, or closes the tab can come back in the same browser and pick up where they left off, score and locked-in answer included. Their place is remembered for 6 hours from joining; once the quiz has ended, reopening the page shows the final results until they tap Play Another Quiz.

Final results

When the quiz ends, everyone sees a Final Results screen. The host’s screen — the one you project — shows:

• A podium with medal cards for the top three finishers.
• Summary stats for the session — questions, players, answers, and average accuracy.
• The full standings from fourth place down.
• A per-question recap showing how many players got each question right.

Each player sees where they finished and their final score, plus the leaderboard: the top 10 and their own row, or everyone if you enabled Show full standings to players.

Both screens carry a “Held on” byline with the date, the start and end time, and the duration — for example, May 17, 2026 · 2:30 PM – 2:42 PM EDT · 12 min — shown in each viewer’s own local time.

Top-three finishers get a celebratory confetti burst on their own screen, and the host’s results screen celebrates too. (The confetti respects the visitor’s reduced-motion preference — see Accessibility.)

If every question was a poll, the finish is survey-style instead: players see a thank-you screen with the number of questions, participants, and responses, plus the “Held on” byline — no podium, no scores, and no standings, because there was nothing to score. The host’s summary shows the response rate and each question’s top pick.

From the results screen, players can choose Play Another Quiz (Done after an all-poll quiz), and the host can ↻ Start a New Session, download the results as a CSV with ⬇ Download CSV, or Close the results. Logged-in players also get a My Past Plays button to review their history.

Guests vs. logged-in players

Quizpio works for anonymous guests and logged-in members alike, and you choose which you allow.

Guests play with just a nickname — no account, no friction. This is the default.

Logged-in WordPress users get a richer experience:

• Their nickname prefills from their profile.
• A My Past Plays button (on the join and Final Results screens) opens a personal history of the finished sessions they’ve played on your site.
• They appear in the Players admin page, so you can see who’s been playing across sessions.

Both kinds of player play the same quiz. To require accounts and turn off anonymous play, switch off Allow Guest Players in Quizpio → Settings.

Multiple quiz authors

Running a site where more than one person makes quizzes — a few teachers sharing a school site, or several colleagues each hosting their own sessions? Assign the Quizpio Quiz Author role from Users in your WordPress admin, the same way you’d assign any other role.

A Quiz Author can create, edit, and publish their own quizzes in the dashboard, and host them from each quiz’s page. What they can’t do is see anyone else’s: each author sees only their own quizzes and the sessions they ran — the results, CSV exports of their own plays, and the option to end or delete their own sessions. Administrators continue to see everything across the site, and the Players and Settings screens and the Quizpio Quiz Embed block stay with administrators.

There’s nothing to configure in Quizpio beyond assigning the role — no permissions screen, no per-quiz sharing settings. Since Quizpio 1.3.1, Quiz Authors also get past WooCommerce, which otherwise sends users to its My Account page and hides their toolbar.

Settings

Find these under Quizpio → Settings.

• Background Refresh Interval (seconds). How often each connected screen — host and players — checks for updates, from 1 to 10 seconds (2 by default). Lower feels more responsive but asks more of your server; higher is gentler but can feel laggy. Two seconds suits most quizzes; raise it to 3–4 seconds for sessions with 50 or more players at once, and keep it around one-third of your shortest question’s time limit.
• Reveal Pause (seconds). How long the reveal screen between questions stays up, from 2 to 15 seconds (10 by default). When the host paces the quiz by hand, the reveal waits for them instead.
• Allow Guest Players. On by default — visitors join with just a nickname. Switch off to require players to be logged in.
• When Quizpio Is Deleted. Choose what happens if the plugin is ever removed: delete everything (the default), or keep your quizzes, results, and settings on the site so a future reinstall picks up where you left off. Quizpio asks the same question when you deactivate it from the Plugins page.
• Data & Cleanup. Quizpio never deletes anything on its own. When you want to clear space you can delete sessions in a date range — set a start date, an end date, or both — or delete all session data (you’ll be asked to type DELETE to confirm). Either way, only the play history is removed — your quizzes are never deleted.
• Compatibility & Server Check. The Open Diagnostics → button in this card, at the bottom of the Settings page, opens the Compatibility page, which inspects your server and hosting setup and flags anything worth knowing. It isn’t a menu item of its own — Settings is the way in.

The Settings page confirms with a “Settings saved.” message when your changes are stored.

Sessions and reporting

Dashboard (Quizpio → Dashboard) gives you an at-a-glance view with overall stats, a callout for active sessions — with Open Host View ↗ for the ones you’re hosting — and a list of recent sessions.

Sessions (Quizpio → Sessions) is the full history. You can filter by quiz and page through past sessions. Open any session with View to see its detail: the final leaderboard plus a per-question breakdown showing how the room answered each question. From there, the session’s host or an administrator can End Session — the way to clear a lobby or game that was abandoned without being ended properly — or Delete Session to remove its record.

Exporting results. Use Export CSV on a session’s detail page, or ⬇ Download CSV on the host’s Final Results screen. Each row covers one player’s answer to one question and includes: nickname, rank, score, question number, question text, the option they selected, the correct answer, whether they were correct, points awarded, and their response time in milliseconds. The file is named from the quiz and the session date, so downloads stay easy to sort.

Players (Quizpio → Players) lists your registered (logged-in) players with sessions played, best score, and when they last played, and lets you click through to an individual player’s history. This page covers logged-in users; anonymous guests aren’t tracked here by design.

Accessibility

Quizpio is built to be usable by everyone:

• The whole quiz interface is keyboard-navigable, with ARIA roles and live regions so screen readers announce each change of phase on players’ screens (a new question, a reveal, the final results).
• Keyboard focus follows the game on players’ screens — it moves to each new question as it appears — and dialogs keep focus inside until they’re dismissed, so nobody using a keyboard or screen reader loses their place mid-round.
• Counts and their labels agree in every language. A finish screen with one question reads “1 Question”, not “1 Questions”, and each language applies its own plural rules rather than English’s.
• The interface carries its own styling rather than inheriting from your theme, so it behaves consistently on every site and renders in your device’s native system font — type that looks at home on Mac, Windows, or Android.
• All animation, including the end-of-quiz confetti and the pulsing timer, respects the visitor’s reduced-motion setting. If someone’s system asks for less motion, Quizpio honors it.

Hosting, caching, and performance

How many players can join? There’s no fixed limit — it scales with your hosting. Because each player’s browser polls your server for updates, the real ceiling is how many of those requests your host can serve. On entry-level shared hosting, Quizpio comfortably runs classroom-sized rooms of 50–100 players; a stronger host handles more.

No special infrastructure. Quizpio runs on standard WordPress — no Node.js, no WebSocket server, no external service.

Cache plugins. Quizpio is built to work alongside page-cache plugins (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed Cache, and others). It marks its live-update requests as uncacheable — no-store headers, plus the DONOTCACHEPAGE flag most cache plugins honor — and adds a cache-busting parameter on every update check — which covers nearly every real-world setup. The Compatibility page — the Open Diagnostics → button at the bottom of Quizpio → Settings — checks your site and flags anything worth knowing.

Troubleshooting

• Players can’t join with the PIN. Make sure you’ve clicked Launch Session (the PIN only exists once a session is launched) and that players are entering the current session’s PIN; a mistyped PIN shows No game found with that PIN. Joining is open only while the session is in the lobby — once you’ve clicked Start Quiz, or with a PIN from an earlier session, players see This quiz is not accepting players right now. A nickname already taken in that session asks the player to pick another.
• Someone is stuck on an old screen. This is almost always page caching. Open the Compatibility page from Quizpio → Settings, and if needed exclude /wp-json/quizpio/* in your cache plugin.
• Updates feel slow or laggy. Lower the Background Refresh Interval in Settings, keeping it around one-third of your shortest question time. If your host is under heavy load, a slightly higher interval trades a little responsiveness for stability.
• A session was left running and won’t clear. The session’s host or an administrator can end it with End Session on its detail page under Quizpio → Sessions. Use this when a host closed their laptop mid-game and the lobby is still showing as active.
• A player left and wants back in. A player who left (via the Leave button) can’t rejoin that same session — that’s intended. A player who merely refreshed or lost connection can rejoin automatically within the 6-hour window. To bring a departed player back, start a new session.
• “Please sign in to join this quiz.” Anonymous play is turned off. Either sign in, or have the site owner enable Allow Guest Players in Settings.
• I see host controls instead of the join form. You can edit this quiz, so Quizpio shows you the host view. To join as a player, open the quiz in a private window or on another device.
• A Quiz Author is sent to the home page or the My Account page instead of the dashboard. Another plugin is keeping their role out of the dashboard. Quizpio already lets Quiz Authors past WooCommerce; for any other plugin, allow the Quizpio Quiz Author role in that plugin’s settings — see Multiple quiz authors.
• Something looks wrong right after updating Quizpio. If the plugin was updated while a session was actually running, the host and players should refresh their pages once. Everything reconnects normally afterward.

Translating Quizpio

Quizpio is translation-ready and ships with a quizpio.pot file in its languages/ folder. Use a tool like Poedit or Loco Translate to create a translation, and place the resulting .po/.mo files in wp-content/languages/plugins/. True/False labels are ordinary editable text on each question, so those you simply type in your own language as you write the quiz.

One extra step for the live screens and the editor. Some of Quizpio’s text is drawn by JavaScript rather than PHP — the live quiz screens and the Quizpio blocks in the editor, including the counted labels (“1 Question”, “3 Questions”) so that every language can apply its own plural rules instead of English’s. WordPress loads those strings from .json files rather than .mo, generated with wp i18n make-json.

Uninstalling and your data

Quizpio keeps your data under your control. It never deletes sessions automatically — clearing play history is always something you choose to do — in Settings, or one session at a time with Delete Session.

What happens when the plugin is deleted is your choice too, set under When Quizpio Is Deleted in Settings. By default Quizpio removes everything it created — every quiz (drafts and trashed ones included), all results, its database tables and settings, and the Quiz Author role (anyone who held only that role becomes a Subscriber) — leaving your site tidy. Switch that setting to keep everything instead, and your quizzes, results, and settings stay in place for a future reinstall. Worth deciding before you uninstall: once the data is gone, it’s gone.

Need a hand or want to report something? Reach us at quizpio.com/contact.